Mazes for Preschool and Kindergarten Let’s talk fine motor skills before I show you the mazes unit I’ve been working on! Why is strengthening the small muscles in your kiddos’ fingers so important? Well, not only do those tiny muscles help with a number of every day skills, such as buttoning up a shirt, cutting, and constructing with Lego, they also help to develop good pencil control in preparation for writing. Mazes are a really fun way to develop pencil control because they provide kiddos with the opportunity to practice moving their pencil along a path, stopping at speciﬁc points, and changing direction before continuing towards the end. Sooo… I happened to find some very cool maze clip art and decided to make a set of picture mazes. But wait, it gets better: these are beginning sounds mazes! How cool is that!? You can focus on beginning sounds and build fine motor and pencil skills all in one fun, hands-on activity. Filip has been very busy playing with his cousins, who we are babysitting for a few days, and so I decided to try out the mazes myself. Of course, you would ask your kiddos to trace the path with their finger first, then with a pencil. I’m a bit more clever than your average preschooler or kindergartner, so I skipped the finger-tracing part and went straight to tracing the path with a pencil. For the apple maze pictured below, I used upper and lower case stamps to stamp along the pencil line. I then rubbed out the pencil line and connected the letters with a purple dash. (Click the picture below to get the free apple maze.) To finish off the butterfly maze, I used q-tips dipped in paint. This took much – much – longer than expected, but it was heaps of fun! You could even ask older kiddos to make patterns with different coloured paint. (Click the picture below to get the free butterfly maze.) To finish off the candle maze pictured below, I decided to get creative and use some c-c-corn to help the c-c-cat find the c-c-cake in the c-c-candle maze… ‘Cause there’s no such thing as too much beginning sounds practice! (Click the picture below to get the free candle maze.) Folks, if you think that your kiddos will finish these pages too quickly, think again! I mean, yeah, they probably will if they only use a pencil! But get creative and have them use different finishing touches for each maze! Use stickers, finger paint, scented markers or glue on different things...
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Preschool Winter Activities I just finished a new Preschool activity packet and wanted to share some of the work Filip and I did today. (This unit is available for purchase in my TpT store; I have included some freebies for you to try when you download PREVIEW here.) The activity Filip was most excited about was the snowman maze. He suggested he trace the path to the black snowman with his finger first, in case he made any mistakes. Then Filip used a pencil and finished the activity by dotting along the pencil line. We also did a beginning sounds cut and paste activity. My little man has become so confident at identifying beginning sounds, and it makes my mummy heart happy to see him excited about his progress! We also did a CVC activity. I coloured the pictures for Filip and he dotted the correct word. I’d just like to add a note here to let you know that I have updated this page as all the correct answers were on the left. Oopsy! We also did a rhyming activity. I initially explained to Filip that rhyming words have the same ending. However, we also have to listen at the ending because sometimes words are spelled differently, even though they sound the same (such as bear and chair). We also tried a sight words activity. The only word Filip could read was “I” and he guessed “like”, so I had to read out the different words to him and he did an awesome job at arranging them in order. Reading comprehension. It’s SUCH a big deal in schools these days as kids don’t seem to be comprehending what they’re reading. I have a theory about why this is so, as I’m sure many parents and teachers do, but this is definitely not the time to discuss that. I have decided to include a booklet and comprehension page in my preschool packets to encourage beginning readers to practice literal comprehension. I read the booklet to Filip, then read out the questions and answer options to him. He did very well, but I suppose that is because I read the book to him 😉 I am hosting a GIVEAWAY on my Facebook page right now! For your chance to win one of these packets, head on over and enter by commenting on the post. Good...
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